'A dash of Sindoor'...She said..

Celebrations are finally over…Dashami(tenth day) saw the immersion of Durga into the Ganges.
Transported back to a normal life…last week was spent romancing the Bengali culture that probably runs deeper in my veins than I had ever imagined.
Sound of conch shells emanating from neighbourhood houses….pandal hopping with friends….marvelling at the skill of men who built pandals to house Durga…each pandal was a work of art…..there was a spectacular pandal shaped like a huge rocket, towering like a Goliath, I went in & the angelic beauty of the idols made me regret for not having brought along a camera …long queues snaked through the streets in front of restaurants & the city was again a witness to the fact that Bengalis love eating……nearly all the apartments were decked up like Christmas trees, decorated beautifully with fairy lights, multihued tube lights…the city that dozes off by ten in the night, seemed to come alive as the clock announced midnight for those magical few days of Saptami(seventh day), Ashtami(eight day),Navami(ninth) & Dashami…couples walked hand in hand, the only few days when girls are officially allowed to stay out of home till late in the night…..if the nights were full of lights, traveling from one part of the city to the next on a quest to spot the best pandals…..the days were spent paying a visit to relatives, hanging out with cousins, discussing about the ‘new’ man in a certain pretty cousin’s life….eagerly running off to the pandals to catch the ceremonies being performed in front of Durga,eating at the community halls where the ‘Bhog’ was distributed to all the neighbours, it was more of a socializing that takes place between nieghbours at this time of the year where they hob-nob & catch up with each others lives.


One of the landmark celebrations on the last day ……watching married women play the Sindoor Khela- smearing sindoor on each others forehead, while the young unmarried girls smiled coyly when the married women applied a dash on sindoor on their cheeks & told them not to wipe it off…an auspicious sign that it would fetch them a good husband in the future.
I stood in a corner, touching the sindoor smear on my cheek….a damp wistful feeling settled itself comfortably in my heart…..someone somewhere walked across the shores of the Arabian Sea, oblivious of the dash of sindoor across a certain honey coloured oval face….